Jefferson Davis, and his complicity in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln ... and where the traitor shall be tried for treason

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- JEFFERSON

DAVIS,

HIS COMPLICITY IN THE

OF

! ASSASSINATION

Abraham Lincoln,

PRESIDENT OF TI1E UNITED

STATES,

AND

WHERE THE TRAITOR SHALL BE TRIED FOR TREASON.

PHILADELPHI A :

SHERMAN & CO.,

PRINTERS.

1866.

JEFFERSON DAVIS,

HIS COMPLICITY IN THE ASSASSINATION

Abraham Lincoln,

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES,

WHERE THE TRAITOR SHALL BE TRIED FOR TREASON.

PHILADELPHIA:

SHERMAN & CO., PRINTERS.

1866.

S

JEFFERSON DAVIS.

" We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights ; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These words were
referred to in emphatic terms by Mr. Lincoln, then Presi-
dent elect, on Washington's birthday, the 22d of February,
1861, when hoisting the American flag high over Inde-
pendence Hall. " But," said he, " if this country cannot
be saved upon that principle it will be truly awful. But
if this country cannot be saved without giving up this prin-
ciple, I Was about to say, / would rather be assassinated on
this spot than surrender it." And for sustaining and carry-
ing out this noble and sublime principle he was assassina-
ted in the capital of his native land b}>- an organized con-
spiracy of ruffians and traitors hired by Jefferson Davis
and his associates in treason and murder.

To every man of common sense the evidence is over-
whelming, and the crime is in keeping with the cold, cruel,
and vindictive temper of the arch rebel who was a careful
student of Machiavelli and of the policy of his hero, Caesar
Borgia.

And yet the morbid commiseration of humanizing phi-
losophers and rebel sympathizers would release from a

merely nominal confinement, with the enjoyment of every
comfort as to food, raiment, and the society of his family,
a man who had deliberately starved and murdered our
poor Union soldiers who had become the prisoners of this
fiendish rebel and his ruffian associates and tools.

All agree that he was guilty of treason, and if justice is
done him, he has simply to go through the form of a trial
by a judge and an impartial jury, be convicted, and hung
as an example to all future time.

What, then, is the law as to the place of trial by which this
just result is to be obtained ?

Crimes are divided into three classes — treason, felony,
and misdemeanor. In the first and last all are principals,
and this explains the language of the English statutes, and
of our Constitution and act of Congress treating all per-
sous committing that crime as principals.

" It is a sure rule in law that in alta proditione nul potest
esse accessorius sed principalis solummodo. This rule being
well understood will open the reason of divers cases which
yet are involved in darkness." "Now in treason, thus
far, it is agreed on all hands :

1. " That there are no accessories a parte ante, but all
such as counsel, conspire, aid or abet, the committing of
any treason, whether present or absent, are all principals."
" For in high treason of all kinds all the partieipes criminis are
principals." " As all accomplices in treason are principals,
as much as those who do the act, there is nothing to re-
mark of difference between them in respect to the indict-
ment." "In high treason there arc no accessories, but all
are principals; the same acts that make a man accessory
in felony, making him a principal in high treason because
of the heinousness of the crime."

I

So, too, the very latest English text-book on criminal
law says :

" In high treason there are no accessories, hut all are
principals on account of the heinousness of the crime;"
and the same rule is laid down in the last edition of the
very learned treatise of our American commentator on
the criminal law. And the same rule is applicable to all
misdemeanors.

In the Commonwealth vs. Gillespie, where the defendant
had Mr. Binney and Mr. Chauncey as his counsel, Judge
Duncan said : " It made no difference where Gillespie re-
sided, if he conspired to sell New York lottery tickets in
Pennsylvania with his agent, and the agent effected the act,
the object of the unlawful conspiracy, he is answerable
criminally to our laws. In this offence there is no acces-
sory. It must be recollected the conspiracy is a matter of
inference, deducible from the acts of the parties accused,
done in pursuance of an apparent criminal purpose in
common between them, and which rarely are confined to
one place; and if the parties are linked in one community
of design and of interest, there can be no good reason why
both may not be tried where one distinct overt act is com-
mitted. For he who procures another to commit a misde-
meanor is guilty of the fact, in whatever place it is com-
mitted by the procuree. For if Gillespie was not account-
able to our lawTs, then this offence would, within our State.
be committed by him with impunity."

The same doctrine was laid down in the case of The
People vs. Adams, by the old Supreme Court of New York,
and affirmed unanimously by the Court of Appeals, under
the new Constitution. In this case, the defendant's coun-
sel were Henry Stanbery, the present Attorney-General of

the United States, and the late George Wood, who was at
the head of the New York bar.

This was a felony, perpetrated by the defendant, residing
in Ohio, by means of an innocent agent in New York,
where the crime was committed. All the authorities were
cited and discussed in both courts, and no other court has
ever disputed the law as enunciated by the New York
courts.

" But," said Mr. Justice Grier, in his very able opinion
in The United States vs. Hanway, " in treason all are prin-
cipals, and a man may be guilty of aiding and abetting
though not present;" and the same learned judge gives
the true meaning of constructive treason in the same opin-
ion. " The better opinion then at present seems to be,
that the term 'levying war' should be confined to insur-
rections and rebellions for the purpose of overturning the
government by force and arms. Many of the cases of con-
structive treason quoted by Foster, Hale, and other writers,
would perhaps now be treated merely as aggravated fel-
onies."

Where, then, shall Jefferson Davis be tried ? Not in
Virginia or any rebel State ; for there' the trial would be a
farce enacted by the authorities at Washington simply to
secure his escape from all punishment for the crime of
treason. There was the overt act of the battle of Antietam
in Maryland, and of the battle of Gettysburg in Pennsyl-
vania, both of which could be proved by two witnesses.
Let him be tried in Pennsylvania by two loyal judges and
by a loyal jury.

II.

The report of the Judiciary Committee of the House of
Representatives, furnishes ample food for reflection upon
the characters of the leading spirits of the rebellion,
and of the tools and means employed by them to secure
the success of their perfidy and treason. "The secession
of South Carolina" (and of course of the slave States), said
Mr. Phett, " is not an event of a day. It is a matter
which has been gathering head for thirty years." " I
have been engaged," said Mr. Keitt, " in this movement
ever since I entered political life." "It is no spasmodic
effort," said Mr. Parker, " that has come suddenly upon
us ; it has been gradually culminating for a long period of
thirty years."

Howell Cobb, who had been studiously ruining the finan-
cial credit of the government, and had arranged his plans
for the secession of Georgia, had his views communicated
by his tool, the Assistant Secretary of State, to the editor
of the Charleston Mercury, on the 1st ^November, 1860,
before the Presidential election; and Judge Black, the
Attorney-General, with a full knowledge of the traitorous
views of his fellow members of the Cabinet, Cobb, Floyd,
and Thompson, on the 20th of the same month, in an
official opinion to President Buchanan, pointed out the
method by which a seceding State could leave the Union,
and the government would have no right, by force of
arms, or in any other way, to compel obedience to the
laws of the land. This was what the President and the
Southern traitors wished.

The seed of secession had been sown and manured by a

8

disappointed Presidential candidate, whose life General
Jackson regretted he had spared. The dragon's teeth
sprung up armed men.

This traitorous feeling, nourished through thirty years,
brought on certain evil effects arising from the abnormal
state of Southern society, consisting of a comparatively
small body of slaveholders, with a large number of colored
slaves, and of white trash, placed by the slave aristocracy
a grade below their own chattels. The white children
were nursed by colored female slaves, and the children
were the companions and tyrants of illegitimate slave
children, and naturally imbibed in infancy the vices of a
degraded manhood, of which the most difficult to eradicate
is lying, the parent of an aggravated form of it denomi-
nated perjury.

This state also produced another remarkable effect —
the strongest evidence of a semi-barbaric civilization — the
universal carrying of firearms and bowie-knives, from the
college student of twelve to the gray-headed judge or gov-
ernor, with an indiscriminate use of these weapons at all
times and under all circumstances. In some States duel-
ling was forbidden, but it was always thought chivalrous
to pistol or stab your enemy, often without any notice,
even to be prepared for an}T acts of hostility.

These habits led Southern men to regard assassination,
particularly if covered with any pretence, as a thing rather
to be applauded than condemned.

The strongest exemplification of tins was the brutal and
cowardly attack of Brooks upon Senator Sumner, unan-^
uounced and without warning, with a predetermined de-
sign to prevent his defending himself, and sustained by
armed men to prevenl any defence. It was brutal in man-

ner, because the blows were on the bead, to destroy a fine
intellect ; cowardly, because the assailant was afraid to meet
his antagonist in his full strength and power. This was
attempted assassination, costing the attacked years of pain
and suffering, and hastened the death of the assassin, al-
though received and cheered by Southern ladies, as a hero
worthy of a laurel crown.

Such is the natural result of a slave aristocracy, where
every man conceives he is to be his own judge and his own
executioner.

When, therefore, States were seceding, and some lead-
ing secessionists instructed by the absconding ones were
left at Washington, it is not surprising to find that means
were taken to defeat the popular choice by assassination
of the chief, as had been attempted in Alabama, when
Douglas was electioneering in the South, in 1860.

Before Mr. Lincoln left home for Washington in 1861,
threats had found their way to the public ear, that he
never would reach Washington alive. On the first day
of his journey an attempt was made to throw the railway
train oft" the track; and as he was leaving Cincinnati a
hand grenade was found secreted in the car in which he was
to travel ; and there is no doubt that there was a conspiracy
in Baltimore to assassinate him on his way to Washington,
which he escaped by timely information from two inde-
pendent sources, and appeared at the Capital to the entire
discomfiture of the rebels and their friends. There were
therefore three deliberate attempts made to assassinate the
President before his inauguration, made no doubt with the
knowledge and at the instigation of the leaders who were
to profit by his death.

The cruelty of Jefferson Davis in not only permitting

10

but authorizing the cruelties inflicted upon our starving
prisoners at Andersonville, Salisbury, and Richmond, with
the deliberate intention of killing or disabling them, by
want, exposure, and even by downright murder, is too
well known to need detail or repetition. Rewards were
publicly offered for the assassination of the President; and
the report of the Committee shows that several distinct
offers were made to Jefferson Davis of the same kind,
which were deliberately considered by him and his ad-
visers, but which were never known by the loyal ISTorth
until discovered among the rebel archives after Richmond
was in the possession of Grant and his gallant army.

Jefferson Davis commenced his rebel career by two
crimes — perjury as a Senator and former member of the
Cabinet of President Pierce, and treason against the
United States. He had been a cadet, and received his
education at the expense of the government. A man
guilty of two such heinous crimes can hardly be supposed
not to have encouraged these preliminary attempts at the
assassination of the chief, whom he branded as a usurper
and a cruel and remorseless tyrant.

In examining the direct testimony adduced, we must
not lose sight of the fact that the rebel emissaries in Can-
ada were sent there by Jefferson Davis himself, under ver-
bal instructions which their acts and declarations show to
have included robbery, murder, and wholesale destruction
of Life by arson and by pestilence, through the deliberate
introduction of contagious diseases, and that the guilty
agents were screened and protected by the direct action
of Jefferson Davis himself. The first idea of the rebels
was tli.' assassination of the President elect before his in-
auguration, as we have already seen.

11

The Canadian emissaries, according to their own ac-
counts, were men capable of any crime np to the secret
assassination of any loyal man who stood in their way.
From whom did they receive their cue ? From their
master, Jefferson Davis, whose instructions were received
from him verbally, and who had the uncontrolled com-
mand of the secret-service money or funds of the rebel
government.

The first proposition is to blow up the President and
Congress, at their extra session in July, 1861. This was
undoubtedly made to the rebel Secretaries of War and
State. The second is made on the 12th of September,
1861, which was to dispose of the leading characters of
the North, and addressed to Jefferson Davis himself,
which is indorsed by him, " Secretary of War, J. D.," and
upon the back of this letter is the name and residence of
the writer : " Has discovered mode of disposing of the
leading characters of the North. File."

The third proposition to Jefferson Davis, himself, under
date of 17th of August, 1863, after the defeat at Gettys-
burg, is made to assassinate "the most prominent leaders
of our enemies." " For instance, Seward, Lincoln, Gree-
ley, Prentice."

" The most plausible argument" says Mr. Durham, "seems
to be that to impress upon the Northern mind that for men in
high places there to wield their influence in favor of the bar-
barisms that have been so cruelly practised upon us IS TO
JEOPARDIZE THEIR LIVES. For designing leaders
there to feel that the moment they array hordes for our desola-
tion, at that moment their existence is in the utmost peril,
would produce hesitation and confusion, which would hasten
peace and our independence."

12

This language reminds us of the poisoning at the Na-
tional Hotel, which, if successful, would have given us a
secession President, and which, it has been asserted, bent
the President to the ultra Southern policy from a constant
dread of assassination. Whether the same fear has so
affected the policy of another President and the chief of
his Cabinet, as to make them the friends of the rebellion
and the enemies of the Union, is a question to be answered
by men, one of whom was%early killed and the other in-
tended to be taken off by the hands of assassins, whose
scheme was to destroy the elected chief of the Republic and
every Cabinet adviser whose vigor was feared. Whether
this fear, this dread of assassination, has produced " My
Policy," is perhaps the most charitable view to be taken
of measures which are destructive of the Union, and are
placing the defenders of their country in the power of the
rebels and traitors they had conquered on the field of
battle.

This significant letter was received on the 24th August,
1863, and was indorsed : " Asks permission to take from
three to five hundred men and assassinate the leading men
in the United States. Respectfully referred by direction
of the President to the honorable Secretary of War."

The next letter is that of Lieutenant W. Alston to Jef-
ferson Davis, " who offers his services to rid the country
of some of its deadliest enemies;" and this is J. D.'s con-
struction of it, and it is "respectfully referred, by the di-
rection of the President, to the honorable Secretary of
War." This letter was received on the 29th of Novem-
ber, 1864, and was recorded December 15th, 18l>4, " By
order. J. A. Campbell, A. S. YY\," who had been asSO-

13

ciate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States,
and who thus made himself a confederate of assassins.

The whole course of the evidence implicates Thompson,
Clay, and Sanders, and others, Jefferson Davis's trusted
emissaries in Canada, with Booth and his fellow assassins;
and the interviews of Surratt with Davis and Benjamin in
Richmond make the conclusion irresistible that the assas-
sination was planned in Canada and Richmond, and car-
ried iuto effect by the subordinate agents of the rebel au-
thorities.

" When Mr. Jacob Thompson," says Montgomery,
" spoke to me of the assassination, in January of this year
(1865), he said he was in favor of the proposition that had
been made to him to put the President, Mr. Stanton, Gen-
eral Grant, and others, out of the way."

And then comes the clinching language of Jefferson
Davis in his flight : " Well, General, I do not know ; if it
were to be done at all, it were better that it were well
done ; and if the same had been done to Andy Johnson,
the beast, and to Secretary Stanton, the job would be com-
plete."

Does any man in his senses believe that Jefferson Davis
was not a party — an active, controlling party — in the plot
to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward, An-
drew Johnson, Edwin M. Stanton, and General Grant ?

If these propositions were scouted by the arch rebel,
would he not have cautioned the President against these
would-be assassins, as was the case of Mr. Fox in relation
to the Emperor Napoleon, as related by Thiers in his
second volume of The History of the Consulate and the
Empire of France under Napoleon? — ch. 24.

This is his language : " A fortunate circumstance which

14

Providence owed to that honest man (Mr. Fox) furnishes
him with a most honorable and most natural opportunity.
A wretch, judging of the new English administration from
the preceding, introduced himself to Mr. Fox and offered
to assassinate Napoleon. Mr. Fox indignantly ordered
him to be seized by the doorkeepers, and delivered up to
the English police. He wrote immediately a very noble
letter to M. de Talleyrand, denouncing the odious propo-
sal which he had just received, and offering to place at his
disposal all the means for prosecuting the author, if his
scheme appeared to involve anything serious."

The difference between Charles James Fox and Jeffer-
son Davis was simply that the one was an honest man, the
oth er a •perjured traitor and an assassin.

III.

The three Commissioners appointed to meet the Presi-
dent, in January, 1865, by Jefferson Davis, were Alexan-
der II. Stephens, the second officer of the rebel govern-
ment, R. M. T. Hunter, the President of the rebel Senate,
and John A. Campbell, the rebel Assistant Secretary of
War.

In January, 1865, Mr. Jacob Thompson had submitted
the proposition to assassinate the President and others,
which lie was in favor of, to his government at Richmond.
They had deferred giving an answer, and he was only
waiting their approval. " My impression," said Mont-
gomery, "from what Beverly Tucker said, was that he had
received their answer and flair approval, and that they had

15

been detained waiting for it" We have seen that three
distinct proposals of assassination had been formally re-
ceived by Jefferson Davis, read and referred to his rebe
Secretary of War, and that the last letter was recorded on
L 15th of December, 1864, by John A. Campbell one o
the rebel commissioners, and it cannot be supposed that
the other two commissioners composing a part of the rebe
government, were kept in ignorance of this fact. Stil
fess can we suppose that these gentlemen were ignorant
of the proposition submitted to the rebel government in
January, 1865, and their official approval oi the intended
scheme of assassination. One of them was certainly privy
to the plot, and yet neither this man, a former high judx-
cial functionary, nor either of his associates spoke one
word of warning to their lawful President, who met them
in the confidence, that although traitors they were not as-

"Z'of these gentlemen claims a seat in the Senate, and
is cordially received by the Executive, who has forgotten
the assassination of the President, which would not he
taken place if either of these three gentlemen bad dis-
closed what they knew of the propositions made , * the
rebel authorities, and their approval by then- f«f*£
The conclusion is inevitable of the complicity of Jefter-
son Davis in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
But of his treason, can any man doubt for a moment.
Whose fault is it that he is not tried I It is the fault of
the Executive. It lies with him to cause the Attorney-
General and his subordinates to institute criminal proceed-
i„gs_and where? Not in Virgil, but in PennzyUama,
where he will get justice.

16

Is the traitor who starved and murdered our prisoners
to be paroled, or pardoned, or to have only a mock trial
and, according to the Executive policy of reconstruction'
to return to the Senate as a loyal Senator from the loyal
State of Mississippi, absolved from all his crimes by the
right reverend bishop of the diocese ?

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